Speech by Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the National Commemoration at the Auschwitz Monument, Amsterdam
Ladies and gentlemen,
Little Anny Aa was only 21 months old when she was murdered in the gas chamber of Sobibor.
Her name is the first of 102,000 names being read aloud this week in Westerbork.
The names of more than a hundred thousand Jewish compatriots, and of hundreds of Roma and Sinti – men, women and children alike.
Here, close to this spot, they will be given back their names – in stone.
That which they cannot take back themselves, we must give back to them.
The question remains: how could this happen?
Where did it come from: so much hate, cruelty and injustice?
How was it possible for persecution, deportation and murder to take place so easily, in full view of so many?
The answer is dark and confrontational.
We know the facts, the accounts of what happened.
Accounts of the Dutch ‘Jew hunters’, who drove thousands of people to their deaths for derisory amounts of money known, sickeningly, as ‘kopgeld’, or ‘cash per head’
Of the threat of betrayal, which lurked everywhere.
Of how, when people were carted away and their houses looted, bystanders looked the other way – out of self-preservation, opportunism or indifference.
Even after the liberation, the few who’d escaped from Hell returned to a frosty reception.
And yet, when all was said and done it was not enough. Not enough protection. Not enough support. Not enough recognition.
Of course, there was the hope of shelter, the courage of resistance, the collective rebellion of the February Strike of 1941.
And yet…
And yet, when all was said and done it was not enough.
Not enough protection.
Not enough support.
Not enough recognition.
We ask ourselves what we would have done in those extraordinary circumstances.
We know that the German occupying forces were merciless.
Raids, reprisals and torture were the instruments of a regime of terror and fear.
How brave would we have been?
Hopefully we will never have to find out.
But the words ‘Auschwitz Never Again’, displayed here at this monument, require a permanent accounting of us, as a society.
Because today, 75 years after Auschwitz, anti-Semitism is still with us.
Now, while the last survivors are still with us, I apologise on behalf of the government for the conduct of the Dutch authorities at that time.
That is why we must fully acknowledge what happened back then, and say it out loud.
When a murderous regime took a group of our compatriots and separated them, excluded them and dehumanised them, our country failed in its duty.
When state authority became a threat, our public institutions failed in their duty, as guardians of justice and security.
To be sure, within the government too there was resistance on an individual level. But too many Dutch officials simply did as they were told by the occupying forces.
Others tolerated this evil in the hope that they might use their position to do some good.
Very occasionally they succeeded.
But far more often they did not.
And it took too long for the bitter consequences of registration and deportation to be fully recognised.
Now, while the last survivors are still with us, I apologise on behalf of the government for the conduct of the Dutch authorities at that time.
I do so in the knowledge that there are no words that can capture the enormity and the horror of the Holocaust.
It is our duty, as the post-war generations, to continue to commemorate.
To honour the names of the dead.
To continue to render account.
To stand strong together in the here and now.